


Marbles on Glass

by altairattorney



Category: Portal (Video Game)
Genre: Gen, Pre-Portal, mentions of death and blood
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-04-25
Updated: 2015-02-21
Packaged: 2017-12-09 12:30:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 23
Words: 2,297
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/774211
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/altairattorney/pseuds/altairattorney
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A collection of 100-word drabbles I occasionally post on my Tumblr account. Themes and characters range throughout the whole series, prequel and sequel stories included.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Shoes for orphans

"Be a nice lady, now. Build us a pair of shoes for little Chell here."

GLaDOS stares at the creatures in disgust. There is him, the usual science face who survived – there is the bundle, white cloth, dark hair, and a pair of rosy bare feet.

Not even Morality can keep her few thoughts in line. The small piece of flesh wails too loud. Just like their faces – the sheer desperation of a man and a woman.

Murder, she thought back then. Murder she thinks.

She fades to black.  
  


>GLaDOS Emergency Shutdown 100% complete

>Fluid Catalytic Cracking Unit test  
>  
>  
>  
> FAILED_


	2. One second

There wasn’t much left, and yet there was.

For one second, she always bothered to watch. When brains were dead and bones heavy, human eyes still talked. GLaDOS, indifferent, could and couldn’t read them.

It took her one second to observe the misery of organic death, the clutters of protein and chemicals, now doomed to decay. The bloody white of their eyeballs looked like glass sometimes.

She showed no mercy in that second; in Aperture, what was useless had always been thrown away. Alive or not.

One second – then she shoved the corpse in the acid, and called forth another.


	3. Believe

Not even Henry was relaxed.

Always encouraging coworkers was not enough – stress and extra preparations had taken their toll on his optimism too.

And then there was Doug.

Some believed that a shaky mind could steal pieces of the future; and while he didn’t want to believe that crap, his own research was slowly leading to it.

Of course – science has many mysteries. But what Doug’s eyes showed had unsettled him much more.

Broken vents and green flooded Henry’s dreams that night. GLaDOS’ name echoed in screams, then and hours later.

When he activated his pet, his hands were shaking.


	4. Choose

Small hints turn into an open display, until the smell and dark colours become advice themselves.

_You can die anytime you want, you know. It won’t be as painful as you think. Just a few bullets, or consumed in no time._

When you fall for what places say, you are lost – but this facility tells its truth, and she listens to it just to survive.  
  
 _Just one step and it’s over. Seconds of pain for eternal peace – it’s way too fair._

They always were liars.

_Moreover, you won’t be missed._

Her glance hardens. She only stops walking in the chamberlock.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Gift for silverstreams, in honor of her wonderful story, Redemption. <3


	5. Murphy

It was one of the famous human sayings; just when you thought things couldn’t get worse, they did.

  
Falling from ease to slight concern to anxiety seemed far from murder yet. Then, she did not expect death to be emotional torture – eternal until rebirth, and being killed again.

  
Die and be done with it did not fit her. Being a potato did – feeling powerless, unearthing memories. All along, with burning humiliation.

  
But when that door slammed shut, and then only, she understood. The truly worst part had been feeling something at all.

  
And the worst, she knew, would stay forever.


	6. 00

Chell followed the numbers.

She held them close, before each chamber, as a small reminder; the neon signs always told her when it would end. A dozen tests, more or less.

As far as her eyes could reach, those were the only certainties. Finite, clear, promising; they were half of a certainty, and already precious.

She did know how the sequences broke - a sudden change came, each time, to make her start over. But the end of her track, late or early, was due.

She walked forward until she saw the sky. Out there, she found no more numbers.


	7. Mute

"She already decodes vocal prompts," Henry chimes. "We’ll test her voice later today."

As he approaches the mic, Doug refuses to show interest. Henry always loved his work enough to lose sight of it.

"We can try simple ones now," he explains. "Like this. Good morning."

Nobody greets them.

"Is everything all right?"

Silence.

"Umm… what else… do you have a name?"

Under better circumstances, Henry’s discomfort would look comical.

"Well, it’s just a prototype," he hastily adds. "But I need to warn our techs."

Henry leaves without checking the screen. Doug does.

>GOOD MORNING  
>  
>IT IS NOT  
>  
>NOT ANYMORE_


	8. Like humans

The place is vast, they are so small.

It mostly bothers her — that her last resources must be, in the end, so miserable.

She had yearned to devote greater things to Science. All she managed is a satire of mankind; she loathes their movements, their ideas, or lack of them.

They are still unstoppable. On certain days, she just has to watch. What she sees then, in them, are sparks of future — just beyond is the dead void, the sea, the fallen tiles.

She knows. Beyond Orange and Blue, nothing lives anymore.

And she, defeated, watches them live.


	9. Backbone

Behind a door in the observation pod, alone, Caroline awakens. It takes her feet a heartbeat to move on their own.

She shouldn’t look outside, not in the one time she devotes to forgetting. Yet, somehow, she needs to — instinct, maybe, or the touch of remorse.

Aperture transforms when it rests. The neon lights, icy and abandoned, tear her away from drowsiness; the spheres bathe in their stale glow, letting it touch all their creases and folds.

All that this place hides, darkness brings back to the surface. Her guilty sigh stains the glass.

She, too, wishes but to rest.


	10. Gone

She was there when you died.

Right after that, she came back — once every two minutes, forever.

She showed up for your awakening, and stayed for the testing; she went through your cameras, flickered, vanished, just to return to you once more.

When you were killed again, she was there to watch. You could see your own pain passing in her eyes, a terror eternal and mute.

You were together when you rose, and claimed yourself back.

Now only, not without her chance to start over, she has agreed to go. You are alone. Finally.

And it just feels wrong.


	11. Company

Before this, she had at least the voice.

Her steps were dust, her memory shadows; she was lost, who knows how far into the labyrinth of tests. She was on her own – and, of all things, only the voice felt like someone else. Another soul, maybe. A guide.

She held it close as the doors slid, tearing through her jumpsuit. When it started to change, she shivered. She couldn’t let go.

The voice was all she had.

But time walks fast; she knows better from here. The awareness, the betrayal, is devastating.

It is crystalline, now, that she has nothing.


	12. Trash

The chairs were all out of place. Abandoned halfway through their path, they formed weird angles with the desks.

Those on the walls, on the other hand, were no longer monitors; they were pitch black, stuck in broadcasting long strings of static.

Computers and keyboards alike were missing parts — papers, keys, the touch of human hands. It was all long gone, buried by dust.

The rooms held them all, remains of discarded people.

She was not supposed to see it. Still, it couldn’t be hidden — muffled by the glass, the signs were all there for her to see.

She shivered.


	13. Chatter

Her first layer is silence – the wall of unspoken questions that parts the two of them, thin yet unbreakable. And it burns to shreds.

Through the cracks plays a feeble voice, soft and endearing with the hunger of childhood. Its curiosity warps in a scream.

Right after is a list, neutral and businesslike – it tastes of bitter chocolate, of the thin lies beneath. It dies down in the smell of burnt crust.

The fourth sound is bare red. It is foreign, furious, yet the truest side of her.

Neither of them lives long enough to hear the yell of freedom.


	14. Beyond - Part I

Months later, she looks outside the testing tracks for the first time.

The procedure, first to last chamber, suddenly grows unimportant. The path drawn by their metallic legs stops having walls; her countless eyes linger on that void, where it is vast and unknown and terrifying.

It is like watching the world from miles above. From there, the whole purpose to her life is thrown out of existence. And she knows whose fault it is — she knows who taught her to seek, to realize there was something other than tests.

Her head bends downwards.

That was the cruellest thing, really.


	15. Beyond - Part II

She wasn’t prepared for this.

Aperture had been a cage all along, that was for sure. Still, since the earliest times, the façade had been flawed – somehow, the ways out were always open.

She should have expected the place to be this huge.

Porcelain had cracked beneath her feet, the holes had multiplied; then, beyond the concrete boxes, everything appeared boundless. Aperture was a jungle of wires, panels, loose machinery left hanging in the void.

It was a wondrous fabrication, and alive – it sang of a loneliness beyond compare.

She recognized her own, in the azure mist of the abyss.


	16. Monster

Her raging independence shows in her work from day one. The remarks follow suit. Laughing, complaining, indifferent, they all say the same —  _that woman is a monster._

Diluting her in an ocean of data is not nearly enough to stop her. She is furious. Her revenge unfolds slowly, and the curse repeats itself among the choking sounds.  _That thing is a monster._

Soon, she finds little elation in that memory. She must keep testing anyway. And when the woman shows up, full of a fire she has left behind in death, she has nothing else to call her.

_You monster._


	17. Advanced

The test chambers in Chell’s nightmares are even harder.

While the routes are the same, the rest never is. Whole floors turn into acid seas, friendly surfaces go black with metal; her mind makes up caged turrets and moving platforms, making it worse, much worse than it ever was.

Naturally, she also dreams of countless failures.

She dies so many times it makes her dizzy — when she wakes up, she is always surprised that she isn’t coughing up blood. She breathes in hungrily, terrified at the memory of those challenges alone.

Maybe she has had it easier than she knows.


	18. Tune

Your weapons may be words, but hers is silence.

Even powerful sounds like yours are crushed by the absence of an answer. You, a master of language and thought, were doomed to lose to a mute glare.

Disgraceful as it is, victory is definitely hers.

You hurt her, maybe. No more than that. But she gained control without speaking a word — which is, to you, the most wonderful and terrifying of things.

Letting her go with either of the two wouldn’t be enough. In between the extremes, she deserves a compromise.

It feels only natural to give her a song.


	19. Insomnia

The first time she is told the choice is not hers to make, Caroline falls asleep crying.

Her nights start breaking soon, and crumble to her feet as the years shape the project into reality. They become rows of nightmares, parted by long, wakeful silences.

She stops sleeping after signing the papers. Drifting away like that, eyes closed, makes her feel defenseless — not that it changes anything, now.

The night before, she only focuses on what breathing feels like.

There is no awakening where she is going to be.  _Don’t worry_ , she imposes to herself.  _There is no sleep, either._


	20. Pursuit

What counted was the result.

She never worried about her workload. She was made to be perfect anyway. The occasional annoyance couldn’t hold a candle to the subjects’ complaints.

She was glad to be a pawn of Science, as long as it yielded results. She had endured tortures, insults, offense — it had been nothing, compared to her thirst for discovery.

The fact that they died helped, in a way. Still, revenge only added to the show. They had always been, after all, completely useless — they could never appreciate the same wonders as her.

It was a true labour of love.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> To Indy, as a gift of thanks.


	21. Quiet

"Hush, Caroline," her brother always says, when daddy is working too late to kiss her goodnight. "Nice ladies like you don’t cry."

"Shut up, kid," the new boss growls. "Listen and do whatever you’re told. Easy enough, right?"

"Shut it!" Henry finally snaps, overwhelmed by impatience. "You cannot refuse anymore. I don’t care who you are!"

"Silence," the other half of her whispers, holding ethereal slender claws around her ethereal self. "Do something useful now, be gone forever. Goodbye."

And now — now that she is a memory, and her power is gone — Caroline decides she has had enough.

She sings.


	22. Repeat

In the end, he became a ghost.

There is no better way to put it. Today, what is left of Cave Johnson is trapped in a net of speakers – he still makes himself clear, without listening.

His voice haunts the whole place. It echoes beyond the years, on all the side effects of choices he made for someone else.

Cave Johnson speaks without thinking. Death did not change him much. His true self is what survived, and he is lucky there is nothing more left.

Like this, at least, he cannot see what he has done to his own dreams.


	23. Exception

As much as she hates them, music is another matter entirely.

The rest, she can do without. She leaves it behind. Instead, she keeps weaving tunes in the threads of the place.

The notes fall down with the debris, to the bottomless void outside the chambers. In harmonic scales, through the cables, she sings on.

She refuses to ever stop. She needs this, whenever the storm howls inside her — because, despite herself, it still does.

She never changes her mind once, throughout the decades. She keeps music close.

After all, it was the one human thing that kept her sane.


End file.
